“There was something so bewitching in her languishing eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she pleased, and her coquetry was so active, so varied, and yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through it, and yet as difficult to resist it.  She danced divinely, and had a great deal of wit, but of the satiric kind.”

Such were the charms and witchery of Mrs Horton when the lascivious young Prince, who was still a boy, was first dazzled by her beauty at Brighton; and when, in fact, she was on the eve of smiling on the suit of one of the legion of lovers who swelled her retinue, one General Smith, a handsome man with a seductive rent-roll to add to his attractions.  But the moment the Prince began to cast admiring eyes at the young widow the General’s fate was sealed.  She had no fancy to go to her grave plain “Mrs Smith” when a duchess’s coronet (and a Royal one to boot) was dangled so alluringly before her eyes.

For from the first she had made up her mind that she would be the Prince’s legal wife, and no light-o’-love to be petted and flung aside when he chose, butterfly-like, to flit to some other flower; and this she made abundantly clear to Henry Frederick.  Her favours—­after a period of coquetry and coy reluctance—­were at his disposal; but the price to be paid for them was a wedding-ring—­nothing less.  And such was the infatuation she had inspired that the Duke—­flinging scruples and fears aside, consented.  One October day they took boat to Calais, and were there made man and wife.  The widow had caught her Prince and meant the world to know she was a Princess.

For a few indecisive weeks the Duke put off the evil day of announcing his marriage to his brother, the King, and to his mother, the Dowager Princess of Wales, whose frowns he dreaded still more.  But his Duchess was inexorable.  She declined to play any longer the role of “virtuous mistress” in an obscure French town, when she ought, as a Princess of the Blood Royal, to be circling in splendour and state around the throne.

Between his wife’s tears and tantrums on one side of the Channel and the Royal anger on the other, the Duke was driven to the extremity of his exiguous Royal wits; until finally, in sheer desperation, he decided to make the plunge—­to break the news to the King.  Had he but known how inopportune the time was he would surely have taken the first boat back to Calais rather than face his brother’s anger.  George was distracted by trouble at home and abroad.  His mother was dying; across the Atlantic the clouds of war were massing; the political atmosphere was charged with danger and unrest.  And when the quaking Duke presented himself before his brother as he was moodily walking in his palace garden, George was in no mood to accept quietly any addition to his burden of worries.